Page:The Black Cat v06no11 (1901-08).djvu/8

2 Royal Bengal tiger nor even the circus proprietor could tell where the next meal was to come from. As the western breeze lifted the flapping canvas, Gunga Din gazed longingly at the nodding cornstalks, and lifted his trunk. They might be good to eat.

Uncle Abner Wallen thrust his hand inside his rusty black coat, buttoned up tightly to the chin. The wallet was still there, and he breathed a little tremulous sigh of relief. For a moment it had been forgotten.

The year was the one before prosperity dawned in Kansas. The mortgage, equally certain, was more feared than death or taxes. In the wallet Uncle Abner had enough money to pay the annual instalment on the mortgage and fifty dollars more. The family had bought no store clothes that season, and in the pinch of economy Uncle Abner had discontinued taking the Washita County Clarion, to which he had been a subscriber since he helped organize the county, fourteen years before. However, no particular misfortune had befallen them during the season of rainless skies, until that day, and the margin of fifty dollars had made the family a cheery one at breakfast. Aunt Ellen, wiping her hands on her apron, had said cheerfully as he turned from the door:

"We'll be monopolists yet, Abner."

But there were tears in her eyes. She knew how much hope and youth and energy had gone into grinding toil to yield this narrow margin.

On the road to town that morning, with the courthouse steeple a short mile away, the roan home stepped into a prairie-dog hole, and falling broke his leg. The veterinary was of the understanding, and he turned his head when he said there was nothing to do but to shoot the animal. He knew what a hundred-dollar horse was to the man before him.

Uncle Abner shut his mouth closely, straightened his bent form a little, and walked away silently. At the corner he gazed hopelessly out over the dead prairie; even the mountains, purple along the western horizon, seemed bare and gaunt. It was then that the strains of the circus band playing for the auction came to his ears.

Almost every one has a weakness which, appealed to at a crisis in life, is apt to yield disastrously. Uncle Abner's trouble was